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[denizaksulu]

The following is an extract from Major Martin Packards book, 'Getting It Wrong'. I know some of the readers will pooh pooh this as per usual. The events mentioned take place whilst Major Packard with officers from the Greek Army contingent and the Turkish Army contingent were patrolling the Ay. Irini/Kambyli area in March 1964.
The point I was making in the title is not the fact that TCs were living in terror of their GC neighbours as mentioned in the article but the reasons why the late Tasos Papadopoulos refused to bring to justice the known GC murderers of the poor villagers. This tri-partite patrol had the full blessing of the Late Pres. Makarios and Tasos Papadoloulos and the then TC leader the late Dr. Fazıl Küçük.

It was during these patrols that the American Ball told Major Packard that 'he got it all wrong. We (the USA) want partition.

Here goes: From pages 225 to 230.

"From the relief organisations in Nicosia I obtained an undertaking that
regular deliveries of food would be resumed. Reporting on this to the muhhtar,
I impressed on him that he should talk more to the resident British unit
commander, rather than asking for a visit from my patrol whenever he felt the
need for reassurance.
A similar message was being delivered to Kambyli on 20 March, when I
was asked to speak privately to a Maronite shepherd. I was told by him that a

Turkish Cypriot family of seven in Liveras, a village to the north of Ayia Irini
close to Kolya Chiflik., had been murdered a couple of weeks earlier. He said
that the father had been shot, the mother and the five children strangled and
the bodies thrown down a well. The story was not unlike others that had been
reported to me in the past and then proved groundless, but in this case there
was a nasty echo of the 7March killing at nearby Kolya Chiflik.
When we reached Liveras, we found it to be a depressing huddle of houses,
with none of the colour and vibrancy that characterised other Greek Cypriot
villages. We had it confirmed that this was a wholly Greek Cypriot
community with the exception of a single Turkish Cypriot family of seven.
Despite the best efforts of Captain Michos, the villagers were extremely
reluctant to talk to us. Eventually we coaxed out of them a story that three
TMT members had come in the night of 6 March and ordered the Turkish
Cypriots to leave with them immediately. They said that the family had
loaded all of their belongings onto the truck of one of the visitors and left with
him.
L They claimed that the Turkish Cypriots had been forced into going by
TMT threats: "Why else should they leave?They were happy and safe here."
Something didn't smell right about the story. I radioed for JFHQ to run a
check with Kutchuk's office and with the Turkish Cypriot leadership in
Kyrenia. A quick swing through nearby Turkish Cypriot villages failed to
produce any news. The TMT leader in Kambyli denied that there had been
any contact with the family.
We went back to Liveras. The more we cross-examined the Greek Cypriot
villagers, the more unlikely did their story seem. When we asked to visit the
Turkish Cypriots' home, they took us there with extreme reluctance.
Wherever else I had seen recently abandoned Turkish Cypriot homes,
there had been a few items of furniture or bric-a-brac left behind, as though
the owners had wanted to convince themselves that they would soon be back.
The inside of this house was entirely bare.
We came out of the house into bright sunshine. Captain Michos took my
arm and said; "Let's go."
As we were walking away towards our Land Rovers he said: "Don't look
back. I don't want the villagers to think we are suspicious. The Turkish
Cypriots must have been killed. There were seven pairs of shoes out of Sight
under the stairs to the porch, two of adults and five of children. Nobody in a
poor family in this country has more than a single pair of shoes. Even if they
did, it would be the last item they would ever leave behind."
The gendarmerie at Myrtou declined to take an interest, just as they had
over the killing at Kolya Chiflik: crimes against Turkish Cypriots were no
longer regarded by them as being within their area of competence. I therefore
asked Captain Michos to find out what more he could through his own
channels, passed a private note to Sergeant Makrides and gave a detailed
report to Tassos Papadopoulos.
One week later I was told that our suspicions had been confirmed. The
names that I had hazarded as probably responsible were also verified. Michos
told me that the affair had been the subject of urgent discussion by the
commander of his regiment with Athens.
At Tassos Papadopoulos' request, I attended a meeting with him and two
other ministers. He said: "We're grateful to you for bringing this matter
directly to us rather than letting it be handled through JFHQ. The President is
deeply upset. We thought we were sufficiently in control for these incidents
to have been ended and we are shocked to find we were wrong. We want you
to understand the difficulty in which we now find ourselves. We have got
ourselves into a position from which we are unable to do what should be
done. You know and we know who's responsible for an appalling crime. They
ought to be brought to justice, but that isn't going to happen."
Papadopoulos said that since Christmas the situation had been, to say the
least, 'anomalous'. "We needed to revise the constitution so as to allow a
normal democratic working of the state. We were encouraged in this by
Arthur Clark, which we took to mean that we had British backing. The Turks
were arming to oppose the revision by force. We created a force to defend
ourselves against an armed Turkish reaction. There was provocation, followed
by violence. Makarios and Kutchuk agreed that normal order must be reestablished,
but that wasn't achieved. In legal terms, we now regard the
paramilitary Turkish Cypriot leadership and TMT as being in insurrection
against the state."
"As you know, we are now committed to a policy of re-engagement and a
new approach to communal relations. Privately the President has accepted
that it will be better to agree together on a movement by the Turkish Cypriots
out of mixed areas where there is friction into areas where they will feel more
secure. You have a part to play in that because we need objective assessments
and a channel of communication that we can trust.
"We agreed after Christmas with Duncan Sandys and Peter Young on
ways to avoid further bloodshed, but these have been exploited by Kutchuk
and the Denktash people to start a process of partition, using the 'Green Line'
and British troops as cover. It's intensely galling for our police that they
cannot now enter some areas controlled by the Turks without running the
risk of serious armed clashes.
"At Christmas, groups emerged which wanted to fight for the Greek cause,
and particularly for our right not to be blocked from enosis. These fighters have
acquired the status of heroes and a position stronger than we have as
politicians. We've tried to incorporate all of these fighting groups into what
will become a National Guard, but some units and some individuals are still
determined to pursue their own agenda, irrespective of national policy. This
has created a very dangerous situation for us'
"Now let's discuss what happened at Liveras and Kolya Chiflik. This was
entirely against our wishes and very damaging to our aims. Properly those
who did it should be arrested and tried for murder. But we're talking about
men who a lot of our people, particularly the right wing, regard as heroes.
Trying to bring them to public trial now could lead to civil war and a much
worse situation than we already have.
"The only alternative we can see is for a secret drumhead court-martial
with powers of capital punishment. That's how it would have been dealt with
during the EOKA struggle. But now all of us here, whether or not we used to
be part of EOKA, are politicians, with hopes to lead the country in the future.

No politician could survive who was found to have been involved in the
summary execution of someone who could later be presented to half the
nation as a hero. So we find ourselves trapped by circumstances that are
deeply repugnant to us."
I said: "You have a heavily armed police force that's already been involved
in plenty of shooting against Turkish Cypriots. Can't they handle it?"
I was told: "No they can't, or won't, and you surely know why."
Later that evening, Tassos Papadopoulos took me to dinner at Lernonias
and we talked more about the problems of controlling violence and how
deeply it was rooted in some elements of Greek society. I told him that since I
first went there, I had been aware in Greece of the rifts created by the civil
war. I repeated to him what Dom Mintoff had told me about Ben Bella's
difficulty in dealing with political violence after the Algerians' underground
war against the French, and of my understanding that the violence inherent in
an anti-colonial struggle could not easily or rapidly be expunged from the new
nation that emerged. In particular I talked about the way that western
intelligence agencies, which saw the eastern Mediterranean as a special
battleground in their Cold War against the supposed threats of communism,
were encouraging nationalist factions to use violence against the left.
I told him about an incident in 1963 when I had visited Athens as an
official observer for NATO exercises and, as Intelligence Adviser to
COMEDSOUEAST, had been looked after for one day by resident US
intelligence agencies. To demonstrate one facet of their undercover mission, I
had been taken to a training camp to the north of the city where American
instructors were indoctrinating Greek gendarmes in covert techniques for
counter-insurgency, including instruction in modern methods of
interrogation, torture and killing. They were teaching that communists were
sub-human, that they had forfeited their civil rights and that they should be
exterminated like vermin. The pupils were being schooled in the use of
extreme violence against communists as a weapon against the spread of leftwing
dogma. I was shown some pigs with KKE* emblems on their backs and
told with some pride by the instructor that his trainees would be told to kill
these as viciously as possible, visualising them as 'commies who had raped
their sisters'.
I said that, from what Nicos Sampson and others had told me, there
appeared to be a deep involvement by Greek intelligence agencies in the
encouragement of violent action against Turkish Cypriot militants and I
asked to what degree this was a cover for action against the Cypriot left.
Rather than respond directly, Papadopoulos asked me what impressions I
had gained of the left in Cyprus. I said that left-wingers I had met seemed to
be first of all nationalists and anti-colonialists, like left-wingers that I knew in
Malta and militant socialists in the UK. But that was not how they were being
portrayed by NATO. They clearly were much more committed than the right
to the creation of a multi-ethnic society, and consequently more helpful to the
process of communal re-engagement. Obviously, also, they were a prime
* Communist


establish through me an unofficial, wholly private and conciliatory back
channel to the President. I took it to be because of this that the Turkish pr
which could have been expected to use the incident in the most inflammat
manner possible, carried only a minor report that the family had disappeared
In the following weeks, I used the stories of Liveras and Kolya Chiflik ;E
leverage with Greek Cypriot leaders when I was arguing with them about tl:
dangers of complacency and the need to provide the Turkish Cypriots with a
genuine security that would justify their trust."
~

[denizaksulu]

Page 229 again.

AYIA IRINI ~ KAMBYLIAREA. MARCH 1964 229
target for subversion and disinformation by western intelligence agencies, and
particularly by the Greek and Turkish Cypriot surrogates of those agencies.
I realised that the party expressed general allegiance to Moscow, but I had
not yet met a communist in Cyprus who had seemed other than primarily a
Cypriot. It obviously simplified things for NATO to label them as dangerous
men who were threatening the stability of the Mediterranean. I supposed that
a left-leaning Cyprus would be just as intolerable for the establishment in
Athens as it would for Ankara and for the British and Americans.
I was asked to keep entirely private what I was to be told. It was explained
that political polarisation meant huge problems for the President and for
other moderate leaders (among whose number the speaker clearly felt himself
to be included): it forced them into a constant balancing act. Then there was a
reversion to what had happened at Liveras, I was told that the only solution
they could see was to accept a return to Cyprus by Grivas and give him the
job of clearing up the whole problem of uncontrolled violence from Greek
Cypriot extremism.
Grivas, he said, was a 'disciplinarian par excellence. He would without any
compunction court-martial and execute anyone who was betraying what he
saw as the cause of Hellenism. The problems were that he was now so
fanatically anti-leftist as to be frequently irrational on political issues and that
it was doubtful how loyal he would be to Makarios. Nevertheless they were
confident that if Grivas was brought back, Makarios and the moderates
would be able to control him and that he would not pose a threat to the
process of inter-communal re-engagement,
He said that Georgadjis therefore had been authorised to arrange for
Grivas to return covertly to Cyprus.'
The significance for me of what had happened at Liveras and Kolya Chiflik
was not just that isolated and unprotected Turkish Cypriots had been
murdered without provocation at a time when there was a significant
peacekeeping presence in the immediate area: that could have been the act of a
homicidal maniac triggered by something other than ethnic prejudice. More
disturbing was that no mechanism existed that would undertake to
investigate and act upon the crime, that there was no element of the police
force that felt it had responsibility for the Turkish Cypriots, even when urged
by Makarios to act without discrimination. In the eyes of many of the police,
the Turkish Cypriots had at Christmas become non-people, excluded from
any recourse to the processes of justice or the safeguarding of their human
rights. Only now were we beginning to get an acceptance from some
gendarmerie units that the future was likely to depend on their regaining the
trust of the Turkish Cypriots. Where this concept had been adopted, there
had been very rapid progress towards inter-communal re-engagement.
By the time I had confirmation of what had happened at Liveras, it was
already twenty days after the killings. I discussed the position with Kutchuk,
told him of Makarios' distress and got his agreement that the event was
entirely contrary to the general trend in the area and ought to be treated as a
one-off aberration. Kutchuk appeared determined that the Turkish Cypriots
should not abandon Ayia Irini. In general he had been strongly supportive of
the patrol's efforts and of the process, urged by Tassos Papadopoulos, to

[kurupetos]

What was the question?

[Get Real!]

What was the question?

Kamnis mesanihta...

[denizaksulu]

What was the question?

Why the murderers of innocent TCs were never brought to justice. Do I have to repeat myself? Straight from TPapa's mouth.

[kurupetos]

What was the question?

Why the murderers of innocent TCs were never brought to justice. Do I have to repeat myself? Straight from TPapa's mouth.

OK, but how can a TC be innocent? By definition this is a contradiction.

[denizaksulu]

What was the question?

Why the murderers of innocent TCs were never brought to justice. Do I have to repeat myself? Straight from TPapa's mouth.

OK, but how can a TC be innocent? By definition this is a contradiction.

God/Allah/Yahwe give me patience. There are two imbe****'s on the cf and one of them has to respond.

[Piratis]

What was the question?

Why the murderers of innocent TCs were never brought to justice. Do I have to repeat myself? Straight from TPapa's mouth.

The (GC) murderers of other GCs were never brought to justice for the same reason. They even tried to murder Makarios and the only GC who went to jail because of this was Samson.

As far as I know no TC was ever brought to justice for the murders of GCs or TCs either. This didn't even happen in in the cases of Isaak and Solomou where there are photographs and videos documenting their murders.

[denizaksulu]

What was the question?

Why the murderers of innocent TCs were never brought to justice. Do I have to repeat myself? Straight from TPapa's mouth.

The (GC) murderers of other GCs were never brought to justice for the same reason. They even tried to murder Makarios and the only GC who went to jail because of this was Samson.

As far as I know no TC was ever brought to justice for the murders of GCs or TCs either. This didn't even happen in in the cases of Isaak and Solomou where there are photographs and videos documenting their murders.

I have never denied the resposibility for the Solomou and Isaak. But you yourself call the north illegal, so what do you expect. We , or I was asking why the legal goverment did not pursue justice for those that were murdered. Now we found the answer. It sounds lke the people in power (both sides perhaps) find it difficult to lose their 'seats' rather than impose justice.
Anyway, from what I read from the same source was that TPapa was pretty reasonable during the events immediately after 21st December 1963. I only wish he had more control over the paramilitaries and the police auxillaries.(by his own admission they were mostly ex-EOKA). But then we had the Americans to deal with.

[Jerry]

What was the question?

Why the murderers of innocent TCs were never brought to justice. Do I have to repeat myself? Straight from TPapa's mouth.

The (GC) murderers of other GCs were never brought to justice for the same reason. They even tried to murder Makarios and the only GC who went to jail because of this was Samson.

As far as I know no TC was ever brought to justice for the murders of GCs or TCs either. This didn't even happen in in the cases of Isaak and Solomou where there are photographs and videos documenting their murders.

I have never denied the resposibility for the Solomou and Isaak. But you yourself call the north illegal, so what do you expect. We , or I was asking why the legal goverment did not pursue justice for those that were murdered. Now we found the answer. It sounds lke the people in power (both sides perhaps) find it difficult to lose their 'seats' rather than impose justice.
Anyway, from what I read from the same source was that TPapa was pretty reasonable during the events immediately after 21st December 1963. I only wish he had more control over the paramilitaries and the police auxillaries.(by his own admission they were mostly ex-EOKA). But then we had the Americans to deal with.

Deniz, I think the truth is that even the politicians at the top were scared to exercise control over the fanatics within their own ranks, they were probably in fear of their own lives - not just the positions they held.